(CNN) -- Secretary of Defense Robert Gates said Tuesday that North Korea is becoming a direct threat to the United States, asserting that the rogue Communist regime is within five years of developing intercontinental ballistic missiles.
"I think that North Korea will have developed an intercontinental ballistic missile within that time frame," Gates told reporters during a visit to China. But he said he has doubts that the North Koreans will be able to field many ICBMs. "I believe they will have a very limited capability," he said.
A spokesman for the Defense Intelligence Agency later supported Gates' remarks, saying, "North Korea's two recent attempts at 'space launches' indicate a continued trend toward development of ICBM capabilities. This trend of development, in addition to North Korea's stated goal of developing a nuclear warhead, supports the Secretary of Defense's recent statement regarding potential threats from North Korea".
If North Korea acts with urgency, it could have ICBMs in five years, said John Pike, founder of GlobalSecurity.org, a military analysis group.
Part of development is just a matter of trial and error.
"If you test enough times, you will eventually test out whatever fabrication and design flaws there are and you will have a workable missile," Pike told CNN.
North Korea's most recent test of it's longest-range ballistic missile, in April 2009, was a failure in that it did not put a satellite into space. But experts point out that it flew over Japan before crashing, farther than any other North Korean missile. The 2,000-mile flight proved North Korea is getting better at building long-range missiles.
The North Koreans are "pretty aggressive with its ballistic missile program," said one U.S. official. "It poses a "serious threat".
The Gates assessment reflects not new thinking but rather an intelligence estimate put out a decade ago, according to US officials. The 2001 National Intelligence Estimate reads "most Intelligence Community agencies project that before 2015 the United States most likely will face ICBM threats from North Korea".
The five-year estimate is "certainly within the realm of possibility," the U.S. official said Tuesday. CNN
